PARENTHOOD

(part #3 of the "Us vs Mother Earth" poem trilogy.)

Note to my child: 

Decades from my adolescence, and days before yours,

I held your hand in a waiting room.

Do you remember?

We sat alone, bar one other.

An elderly woman;

who sagged at my side, 

Skin like fertile soil, 

raked with topography map lines that "x" marked

The spots on her tatty corset.

An odd thing to wear,

But I knew better 

than to chastise the craftsmanship 

of your grandparents.

Silent was she,

Gazing at the cork noticeboard

And I'd be wrong to say 

"I didn't hold my breath"

When her vitrified eyes fell

To the wayward magazine cutouts pinned in the corners

flaunting glamourous models

lying on the red carpeted steps

of concert halls.

To my child:

I remember laughing soft gasping breaths

as you traced the felt of your seat.

I realised all in one revolution 

of the clock by the waiting room door

how new you must've felt to the carpet and ceiling

how all you knew about the world before you hung on the posters 

that hugged the walls,

Yet, you found more contentment 

in the worn upholstery at your fingertips.

In your simple gestures I saw rarities,

The gentle patience that my lips never inherited

The love for the immediate that my life wasn’t granted

The presence of hope, and

An absence of hereditary wrath.

A freedom from man's built-in desire.

And then I made a silent promise

To fight this battle I rebuked all those years ago

not as a soldier or knight, 

nevermore as a mirage of myself with a puerile crown

but as a parent.

and as long as I possessed the strength to stand,

I promised I would hold your hand.

my child:

Do you remember

The moment in which

I made a silent promise

To the old woman at my side

And do you recall

the way she smiled

As if to say that we were only beginning 

to understand ourselves

As if to say that what's mine 

is yours

As if to say a small part of a great burden 

had been exhumed from the pit of her stomach.

child, 

Tell me

Did you hear when I whispered to Her

With lips finally free from wrath

"O Mother, are we forgiven?"

And did you hear the slick glassy snap

of our generational cycle

When she breathed the answer:

"yes, my child, yes."